A place where OSU students, staff and faculty can get invovled with our community in a meaningful way

We are looking for volunteers to help out with the Live Well, Age Well Expo, a health expo focusing on intergenerational health and promotion of healthy behaviors. Website: http://www.agingwellexpo.org/

1) We need 6-8 people to help with basic staffing needs on the day of the event, helping guests find their way around or answering basic questions. Volunteers will be trained. Let me know as soon as you can if you want to help out with this!!!

2) There is also a need for volunteers to help put up flyers on campus and around Corvallis. This can be a fun way to volunteer for a couple of hours with a group or individually.

The expo is scheduled for Saturday May 14, 2011, from 9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. and will be held at the Linn County Fair Grounds.

Please Oke Tammik know if you are interested in taking part in this great volunteering opportunity! Email him at csc_healthwellness@oregonstate.edu

Love the environment? Love volunteering? Well, I have the perfect event that will allow you to get involved in our community. Corvallis Earth Connect is an event the Community Service Center is putting on in conjunction with the City of Corvallis on April 16th to celebrate Earth Day. The event starts out at Avery Park at 10am with a procession of volunteer stations doing environmental work through Avery and Pioneer Park. At the same time the Corvallis Farmer’s Market is opening for business this season downtown. There will also be an Earth Fair and Parade downtown as well. We would LOVE for you to come but more importantly we would LOVE for you to VOLUNTEER at this event. Particularly, we need volunteers, especially groups, to run the stations along Avery Park. If interested please contact the CSC at 541 737 3041 or email Nate Bodie at csc_environmental@oregonstate.edu.

Love tools? Are you a born leader? Do you organize projects well? Well then I have the opportunity for you!
Habitat for Humanity of Corvallis is looking to establish a tool lending library within their ReStore center. They are looking for 1-2 great students set up all the processes and procedures to get this going, work with our ReStore Director to select the tools and prepare the initial marketing information for the launch. It would require between 20 and 30 hours in research and implementation work done at your convenience over a period of a few months. This can be done by one person or a two person team.

Interested? Of course you are! Habitat would even hire an intern to do this work. If you want more information please contact the Community Service Center at 541 737 3041 or email csc_hungerpoverty@oregonstate.edu.

Hey lovely Beavers!
Starting this coming Sunday the Corvallis Overnight Men’s Shelter is in need someone of to come to the shelter and sleep. This person would bring their own sleeping bag and come to the shelter at about 10:45- 7:00am and sleep in a special sleeping area for the overnight volunteer. This space is separate from the men staying at the shelter. There is a paid person who stays awake all night, the volunteer “sleeper” is just in case the awake person needs help. It is an easy way to get some community service hours.They would be able to leave first thing in the morning. Essentially all the person has to do is sleep there. Please, please contact the Community Service Center if you’re interested.
Thank you!

We have a service opportunity available for interested volunteers in celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy this upcoming Tuesday January 18, 2011. Together, the OSU Community Service Center and the Asian & Pacific Cultural Center (APCC) will host a large group of 5th graders from Corvallis’ Hoover Elementary School from 11:00am to 1:00pm.

Volunteers are needed to help guide groups of children through activities at various stations, engaging the children in learning MLK’s legacy. The activities will be held in the MU Ballroom, and will include a campus tour for the children. If you are interested, please contact Sebastián Alejandro González (Social, Cultural, & Education Coordinator) ASAP at CSC_SocialCultural@oregonstate.edu or by calling 541-737-3041.

Sunday May 23rd was the second annual Healthy Habits Day put on by the Oregon State University Community Service Center. It was held at Community Outreach Inc. a different venue from last year’s event, which was held at OSU’s Dixon Recreation Center. The idea this year was to work with a community organization to help educate the general public about different ways they could incorporate healthy habits into their daily lives to help foster their well being. How do you do that you ask? Well we had Community Outreach Inc. participate by inviting their underserved community to the event, also organizations form Oregon State University and OHSU joined us to help put on the event. Among the groups was the Pre-Pharmacy club, OSU Dietician Ann Merchant and OHSU helped by lending exhibits to the event as well. Participants walked around the set up of interactive exhibits and nutritional information tables learning different facts about the ingredients in many popular foods and additives of some popular snacks such as Nutri-Grain bars and soda beverages. There were also exhibits that related to serving portions and measuring physical condition through a sit-up challenge designed for children. This was our first attempt at relocating an event off of the OSU campus to help the larger Corvallis community, and it was a success, we are eager to partner with other organizations from around the city and OSU to continue to foster this growing relationship between the OSU campus and the greater Corvallis Community. Go Beavers!

This Saturday is the annual OSU Day of Community Service! Alumni, students, and friends of OSU will gather together in more than a dozen cities during the OSUAA day of service. Get your work gloves on and help us take the community service spirit of Beaver Nation to the streets! For more information on locations and events in you city take a look here.

After returned from our alternative spring breaks this year we were lucky to have quite a bit of coverage in the local media. Here are stories and articles all featuring our service learning spring break trips in 2010:

On the early morning of our first Saturday, March 20th, off for spring break myself and a group of students loaded two large vans and headed to Eugene to meet up with who would be our traveling partners for the rest of our alternative spring break. For those who don’t really know what an alternative spring break is I shall explain: as students we have chosen to take our spring break and spend it giving back. The OSU Community Service Center and University of Oregon’s Service Learning Center have teamed up this year to do a joint alternative spring break in which our focus is on rural Oregon poverty issues.
We took off on our journey towards Klamath Falls and on our way took a detour to go see Crater Lake. The park was filled with snow still but the sun was shining making for a gorgeous scenery. Some students had never seen Crater Lake before so it was a first for many, including one who hadn’t seen snow before either! After our long day of traveling we arrived in Klamath Falls, Oregon and were greeted by Craig Schuhmann with the Integral Youth Services (IYS). The IYS was generous enough to allow us to set up camp in one of their educational buildings for the past three days.

After a evening of learning about what IYS does for the Klamath Falls communities youth we spent Sunday painting their youth center. The youth center sees around 70 to 80 children in and out of their doors on a daily basis. This center serves as an after-school program that offers a safe environment for educational activities, volunteer opportunities, and FDA sponsored food programs. Children who use the center joined in on our all day painting project. After we were all finished we had painted the entire inside of the center and had managed to get half of the outside finished after the rain disappeared.

It was very rewarding to see how much our help meant to IYS and the little impact we could make just by volunteering a single day.

Today we were lucky enough to visit with the Klamath Tribes. Our day begin with a visit to The Klamath Tribe Administration building were we learned all about the land, history, and who the Klamath Tribes are. Now I could write a whole never-ending blog on the amazing history and culture these tribes have but I will save that for another post. During the day we were treated very graciously as guests. We had the opportunity to visit their Wellness Center and speak with the tribes physicians on many different issues facing the tribes. The Klamath Tribe also owns and operates a casino, Kla-Mo-Ya, where they were kind enough to treat us to a buffet lunch and explain to us how important the casino was to their economic stability.

From the casino we continued to the fish hatchery. The hatchery has been trying to fix the endangered population issues regarding the Upper Klamath’s sucker fish for years and has now added a water lab and is hoping in the near future to more strongly help the salmon population issues in the area as well.
On our way back to Klamath Falls we were fortunate to explore their sacred land that they have called home for thousands and thousands of years.
The past three days have been more than anyone could have expected and we are thrilled for the rest of our adventures to come. Our early morning departure tomorrow will put us in Lakeview early afternoon where we get the chance to explore and learn more about issues the small community has been facing.

This year’s spring break The Community Service Center is offering two great opportunities for students to get involved with. Below is information for both trips. As of now we have reached capacity for the Woodburn trip but there are still available spots on our Oregon Tour. An application is attached at the bottom. It’s an exciting opportunity to lend Oregon a helping hang and get involved in meaningful service projects. Leave with new experiences, friendships and a greater understanding about service and community.

We have two trip offered:

** All costs besides the deposit are paid for by the CSC, lodging will be provided for us at each location but sleeping bags will be needed, members of the CSC will be driving large passenger vans for transportation, and food will covered.

• Sunday March 21| Pre-trip meeting 6-8pm @ OSU
• Monday March 22 – Thursday March 25
o Work on projects at the FHDC facilities
o Discuss issues related to farmworker’s rights
o Visit a labor camp and an activist radio station
o Listen to a panel of farmworkers and their experiences
Oregon Tour with University of Oregon | March 20th – 27th | 8 days = $30 deposit